Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged candid, crowds, Japan, monochrome, people, random, Shibuya, street, Tokyo on April 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Shibuya Street Spotlight” : Tokyo, 17th March 2012
Another shot from what must be one of the world’s busiest street crossings, in trendy Shibuya, which I must admit is not one of my favourite parts of Tokyo.
Shortly after taking this and quite a few other similar shots, I headed for the Apple store (the main reason I’d come), then quickly exited the crowds for more tranquil neighbourhoods…
You really should click here to see a larger version of this picture.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged candid, crossing, girl, Japan, monochrome, people, random, Shibuya, street, Tokyo on April 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Tokyo Crossing” : 17th March 2012
Shibuya is one of the busiest, most crowded parts of Tokyo, and nowhere in Shibuya is more crowded that the large crossing just in front of the station.
I don’t often photograph people, but taking heart from another guy clicking away on his Canon, I too positioned myself to catch the wave of everyday folk as they set off across the road.
I still feel slightly uneasy about doing this kind of work, and that’s probably why I’m not very good at it, but it makes a change from architecture and the abstract, right?
You can see a larger version of this photo by clicking here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged art, chess, glass, impulse, macro, monochrome, philosophy, photography, random on February 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Monochrome Chess” : Hiroshima, 10th July 2010
I submitted this photo in a contest over at Digital Photography Review last year, the first and only time I’ve ever entered such a contest. There was no particular theme, just as long as the image was black and white, and I was very surprised to get a placing in the top ten out of more than a hundred entries.
Even more amusing were the notes the judge left discussing the technical merits of my photograph. From what he said, he must have imagined that I carefully thought out the shot beforehand and then executed it with a camera mounted on a tripod, in ‘mirror up’ mode and using a wireless remote to minimize motion blur, followed by a lengthy session in Photoshop.
In reality, I was sitting in a cafe with a friend and his young daughter, and we set up a game on the beautiful glass chess set to try to teach her the rudiments. I just happened to have my Nikon D90 with me, and took a few snapshots of them both, before realising that the chess set itself might make a nice study. Too lazy to crouch down and take at the level of the board, I just fired it off at random ‘from the hip’ without checking any of the camera’s settings or even looking through the viewfinder. The whole creative process from inception to realisation must have taken about ten seconds to complete. Furthermore, I didn’t even crop the image, let alone use any post-processing. It’s a ‘straight out of the camera’ JPEG file!
This is funny, because the folks over at Digital Photography Review are famous for their conservatism and religious adherence to the technical minutiae of the process rather than the artistic side of the pursuit – the polar opposite to my approach.
This just goes to show that it is the impulsiveness and spontaneity rather than technical prowess that are most important in photography as an art form.
You can see a larger version of this picture here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged girl, random, Rome, street scene, urban, Vatican on November 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Random Romans” : Vatican City, 2nd September 2010
Seeing as how today’s post is the 200th ‘Photo of the Day,’ I thought I’d wheel out one of my all-time favourites (yes, I’ve been keeping back some of the best for special occasions such as this!).
Mind you, I’m getting serious deja-vu as I write this: although I keep meticulous notes, when you get to this many blog entries it’s hard to remember which photos have been published already and which have yet to be aired.
I took this image in St Peter’s in the Vatican City, which is just about my least favourite place in Rome (I find it to be crass, tacky, overly ostentatious and just plain ugly).
I was sitting down, exhausted, in the early evening and about to depart when I decided to play around with my long zoom lens for a while, in the hope of capturing a few candid ‘people’ shots, a genre in which I do not excel.
Suddenly this glamourous lady walked past in front of me and I hurriedly took a few frames of which this was the clear winner.
Yes, it’s not properly focused and it’s blurred, but that just gives the impression of motion in the young woman with her hair swept back, off to who knows where.
Compositionally speaking, I find it to be wonderful, with the group of passersby in the background resembling figures from an L S Lowry painting standing out against the uniform grey of the stone pavement.
Well, even if I have posted this image before, I love it, and I think it’s good enough for more than a few displays…
A larger version of this image can be found here.
